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Apple’s (AAPL) new $500 billion investment plan is winning over President Donald Trump — and proving that CEO Tim Cook knows how to play ball.
“Cook continues to prove that he is 10% politician and 90% CEO,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note following Apple’s announcement, which won instant praise from the president.
The iPhone maker plans to spread its cash out across the next four years, coinciding with Trump’s second term in office. Apple said it will launch an education initiative, double an existing $5 billion domestic manufacturing fund, and hire roughly 20,000 full-time workers.
In a statement, Cook said Apple is “bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future.”
Although neither Cook nor Apple’s news release mentioned Trump by name, the president appears to have been well aware of their plans.
On Friday, Trump told a group of governors that Apple had “stopped two plants in Mexico” and would boost its U.S. presence. Although the president had expected Apple to spend just hundreds of millions of dollars, not hundreds of billions, according to Bloomberg News.
Trump quickly followed Apple’s announcement by writing on Truth Social, his social media platform, that Apple “wouldn’t be investing 10 cents” without “faith in what we are doing.” He also thanked both Cook and the company.
It’s a clear bid by Apple to help navigate the murkiness of Trump’s trade war with China, which began earlier this month. Cook, Ives wrote, will likely use his connections to world leaders to help ensure “smoother waters” for his firm as Trump pursues his trade war.
“They don’t want to be in the tariffs,” Trump said of Apple on Friday.
Cook enjoyed a relatively stable relationship with Trump during his first term, occasionally winning the president’s praise. Last month, he donated to and attended Trump’s inauguration, standing alongside several other major tech leaders including Tesla’s (TSLA) Elon Musk and Google’s (GOOGL) Sundar Pichai.
The CEO built his goodwill with the president through focused one-on-one phone calls and meetings, close relationships with Trump’s family, and a willingness to let things slide, according to the Wall Street Journal. In 2018, after Apple announced a $350 billion investment plan, Trump called Cook to personally thank him.
That all paid off in 2019, when Cook convinced Trump to give Apple an exemption from a series of tariffs affecting Chinese imports. In return, Cook gifted the president with one of the first Mac Pros built at a new U.S. facility.